30 c0111pro111isingly frozen and below, in- evitably, lay a black patch of pines. The wagon pIcked up speed, the black patch grew. It was still far enough down the Inountain for her to see but soon she would lose sight of it; nevLrtheless, she was headed straight for it, in great fear at first. But then an incredible feeling of elation ca111e over her. SOl11ething tre111endous is happening to 111e, she thought, and she began to laugh. She laughed softly, to herself; she laughed and laughed. It wasn't hysteria, it was pure joy. It was the sudden ahsence of pain in her leg that ffidde her laugh, and a general sense of well-beIng; and then there was this thrilling and caltn, this organized and, except for her laughter, silent race toward death. But the l11an SOlllehow caught up with the wagon. He took a terrible fall when he stopped it, but he did stop it. She heard a dry snapping sound as he fell, like a twig breakIng, but he had stopped the wagon and saved her life. He held his right shoulder with his Jeft hand, and when she saw his face, she began to laugh again, a high-pitched, delighted child's laugh. "'V'ilJ you ever forgIve me?" the 111an asked, heavily, in English, although they had spoken French hIgher up on the l11ountain. "I'll f . " 1 . d 1 " b orgIve you, S 1e sal sweet y, ut don't do it again." ..And he, too, began to laugh. He unstrapped her after he had ", ) " " '-'" . I ! J .$ J ' ".f , \ '\ t } . \ .. . , \ \ .. ti -e" . "*" . f I " . " H pIece 0 scu pture, as In a ve a piece of fruIt " "\V on't you have a tossed green sal- ad? " he had asked kindly, frorn behind a 111enu, about a week after their wedding. And that sÎ111ple questIon, phrased in in- nocence and delivered in kindness, drove the steak knife she happened to be look- ing at right through her heart. \Vhat a111 I doing here, she asked herself. She looked up at him, sa\\' that he wore a l11enu instead of d head, saw that he was hidden to her, and that 1110111ent (as IS so often said about so l11any 111arriages) marked the beginning of the end. The 111arriage had been a 111istake so total that it proved relatively easy to eradicate. She left him with no regrets, no tears, and ahllost no 111emories. She called the 111arridge "a gigantic mistake on the human level," and the questions that had to be asked she had to ask her- self; there was no one else around to ask the111. But she didn't get very far with her answers, he cause by that tÎ111e she had discovered in herself (for one thing) a strange lack of curiosity about her fellow hU111an beings. So now she was alone agaIn, alone in a hed that drifted, while the city lay be- low the r00111, huge and heautiful; the city floated, too, which 111ade it extraor- dinarily mysterious, but it was unwilling to share its ll1vsteries, bLcause Paris was a city in which she had never lived spon- taneously and which she had never willingly explored. And that was why she felt for the rooftops and the ChÎ111- ney pots, the skies and the tower, neither the attach111ent of the tOUrIst nor the constant astonis}ullent of the per111a- nent inhabitant. That was why she drifted at nIght, because she was waiting, and her na- ture was such that when she waited, when action was ab- sent frolll her life, she felt she had been set adrift. She was waiting, and Paris was a city where she had always waited; waited, simply, for sOIllething to happen. Where she had waIted to be born, and where she had waited to be old enough to know uJhere she was. Where she had waited to be sent to boarding school; where she had waited, one Christlllas, for an attack of whooping cough to subside so she could be sent back to hoarding school. Where she had waited, still d child, hut now so aware, for the exact lllOlllent (soll1ewhere between wedged the wagon up carefully with new snow. She gave hÎ111 some brandy. Between them they soon finished the flask. It was dark when she was finally hrought to the hospital. And there she stayed, for the longest tÎ111e, with her leg in traction; she sl11oked, pJa yed solitaire, read Agatha Christie, and didn't feel the least bit bored. For a while, the man, hIs shoulder in a cast, went around the village saying, "I never skied so fast in IllY life." His honor was safe, and he didn't 111ind a little boasting. But he did not tell anyone that the young W0111an had spent what should have heen her last 1110111ents on earth gig- gling with pleasure. She loved the 1110111ent of takeoff in a jet. She loved the violent release from the earth, the power of the 111achine in that m0111ent of irre111ediable farewell. It was beautiful, and yet, for her, leav- ing everything behind was never quite enough; she would have liked to ex- perience weightlessness hefore c0111ing down to earth again. She was capable of, at a m0111ent's notice, hoarding a jet in New York, wearing a skirt, sweater, and raincoat, with hlack ballet slippers on her feet and a 111Ink coat over her al111, in order to buy a piece of sculpture in London. The phrase ". f 1 " I I a pIece 0 scu pture was not ners. t was her dear erstwhile (as a friend of hers called him) hushand's. "i\. -- L .........x. .:. f j- . " \ fJ '; 1 , ; .. ,. \.,' 4 -- ,. *\# " . ..... >0 \ . Ii " \ ,.- \,\t't ,. t r ' M#SoI./ ((With a report card like this) 1 g-uess we can stop thinking of him as a future John T. Ltndsay." JANUARY 9, I 9 b 5